Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
Just looked that dual drive up. It's listed as $238 CAD but as you say, out of stock. That's a far cheaper price. I like the idea.
Is it gone for good? Er.. just read up on it. Too bad
I think it has been out of production for two or three years, not enough demand for it. For a while i watched Ebay to see if a cheap one showed up to have as a spare, but never saw one at a bargain price. The only bikes that I have seen that used one (or its earlier version, the Sachs equivalent) were folding bikes. One really nice thing about it for small wheel bikes is that small wheel bikes are hard to get high enough gearing without absurdly large chainrings. But high gear in the dual drive is an overdrive, second gear is direct drive, thus you can use a smaller chainring and still get high gears. I think that makes it perfect for folding bikes that often have 16 or 20 inch wheels. Nutted axle only and 135mm spacing only.
I use a Sturmey Archer bar end shifter on it, the cable pull for the indexing appears to be nearly perfect.